Long live teachers of children, because they can show children how they can save the world.
Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Education provides knowledge through learning, while experience offers insights through practical involvement.
In this quote, Pete Seeger emphasizes the distinction between education and experience. Education often involves formal learning and theory, where one gains knowledge from reading or studying. In contrast, experience is derived from real-world interactions and actions, sometimes leading to lessons learned through mistakes or unforeseen consequences. This highlights the practical wisdom gained from lived experiences, which can sometimes outweigh theoretical knowledge.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a seminar about business practices, this quote illustrates the value of learning through real-life challenges.
More from Pete Seeger
All quotes →According to my definition of God, I'm not an atheist. Because I think God is everything. Whenever I open my eyes, I'm looking at God. Whenever I'm listening to something, I'm listening to God.
Songs are funny things. They can slip across borders. Proliferate in prisons. Penetrate hard shells. I always believed that the right song at the right moment could change history.
Well, normally I’m against big things. I think the world is going to be saved by millions of small things. Too many things can go wrong when they get big.” — Pete Seeger (on how he felt about attending his big 90th birthday bash last year)
I’ve never sung anywhere without giving the people listening to me a chance to join in - as a kid, as a lefty, as a man touring the U.S.A. and the world, as an oldster. I guess it’s kind of a religion with me. Participation. That’s what’s going to save the human race.
I write a song because I want to. I think the moment you start writing it to make money, you're starting to kill yourself artistically.
Similar quotes
We talk of globalization, and how much money is needed for the education of children in the world, their liberation and rehabilitation just $9 billion which is four days of military expense. Just four days. Nine billion dollars is nothing. But what Americans spent on ice cream just 20 percent of this. One fifth of what you spend on ice creams could bring the children out of the clutches of their masters and put them to school.
The old system where every child was locked away and set into nonstop, daily cut throat competition with every other child for silly prizes called grades is broken beyond repair. If it could be fixed it could have been fixed by now. Good riddance.
If you want grown-ups to recycle, just tell their kids the importance of recycling, and they'll be all over it.
The education of youth, an employment of more consequence than making laws and preaching the gospel, because it lays the foundation on which both law and gospel rest for success.
In today’s world of fear and uncertainty, every child should have one class period a day to dive within himself and experience the field of silence - bliss - the enormous reservoir of energy and intelligence that is deep within all of us. This is the way to save the coming generation.
Our students wanted to know everything: but only the newest theory seemed to them worth bothering with. Knowing nothing of the intellectual achievements of the past, they kept fresh and intact their enthusiasm for 'the latest thing'. Fashion dominated their interest: they valued ideas not for themselves but for the prestige that they could wring from them.